DCS: shelley duvall

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Director Robert Altman loved Shelley Duvall. Shelley’s first six theatrical films were under the guidance of Altman. His laid-back style of directing allowed the young and talented Shelley to blossom as an actress. His films were notoriously unstructured and he often encouraged ad-libbing. Shelley felt comfortable under Altman’s direction and she received abundant praise for roles in his films, including a Best Actress nod from the Cannes Film Festival in 1977 for her turn in Altman’s 3 Women. Shelley made six films with Altman before her breakout role with a new director.

In 1980, she was cast as “Wendy Torrence,” the beleaguered wife of a stir-crazy author in the big-screen adaptation of Stephen King’s supernatural epic The Shining. The film would be a jarring experience for Shelley. Working with director Stanley Kubrick would be a very new and very different experience than she was used to with Robert Altman.

Kubrick was a detail-oriented perfectionist, the likes of which Shelley was not familiar. Kubrick expected an extreme level of acting from his cast and would go to extreme lengths to achieve the result he envisioned. Kubrick wanted Shelley to exhibit fear… real fear… palpable fear… a fear that the audience would feel right along with her. So, in an effort to get the best performance out of the actress, Kubrick terrorized her. He yelled. He screamed. He insulted. He threatened. He bickered. He argued. Kubrick purposely isolated her from the other actors. For the climatic scene in which Jack Nicholson’s character accosts Shelley with a baseball bat, Kubrick had her perform the scene 127 times until he was satisfied. Her hair began to fall out in clumps. The final nine months of shooting required Shelley to cry nearly 12 hours a day. She was a wreck. And she never worked with Stanley Kubrick again.

Shelly made one more film with Robert Altman, the poorly-received, big budget musical Popeye, in which she was perfectly cast as the spinach-eating sailor’s girlfriend “Olive Oyl.”

In later years, Shelley spoke positively about her time working on The Shining with Stanley Kubrick, proving she was a class act and the bigger person.

Retired from acting and out of the public eye for years, Shelley passed away from complications from diabetes just four days after her 75th birthday.

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